Tote That Barge, Snip That Book
Charles IsherwoodNovember 6, 2014: Life upon the stage isn’t very wicked, or even emotionally stirring, in the New York Philharmonic’s musically solid but dramatically pallid staging of Show Boat, the venerated 1927 musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. In recent seasons, the Philharmonic has presented terrific, almost fully staged productions of such classic musicals as Carousel and Sweeney Todd. It seems almost perverse, then, that when it came time to present the mother of them all — the show that set the Broadway musical on a path to maturity by tackling serious subject matter and integrating song, dance and story with a new sophistication — the company chose to trim its sails and revert to a more staid, minimally staged concert version. It is always a pleasure to hear an orchestra of this stature play great Broadway scores, of course, and the show has been cast with impressive singing actors: Norm Lewis, of Porgy and Bess and The Phantom of the Opera as Joe; Vanessa Williams as Julie; Lauren Worsham (a Tony nominee for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder) as Magnolia; and Julian Ovenden, best known from Downton Abbey but an established musical theater performer in London, as Gaylord Ravenal.
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